Detail Information

Publications60

..Changes in object orientation were detected more readily. These results point to important differences in the perceptual reality of younger and older children...

Visual similarity in masking and priming: The critical role of task relevance

James T EnnsUniversity of British ColumbiaAdv Cogn Psychol 3:211-26. 2007

..These findings are interpreted within the framework of a reentrant theory of visual perception. They imply that intentions can influence object formation prior to the separation of vision for perception and vision for action...

Apparent motion can impair and enhance target visibility: the role of shape in predicting and postdicting object continuity

..This finding confirms that shape congruence effects on visibility are specific to shape perception and are not due to either general alerting effects for objects in the path of a motion signal nor to low-level perceptual filling-in...

The role of clarity and blur in guiding visual attention in photographs

..These findings imply that the saliency of both image clarity and image blur depends on viewers' goals. Focusing on photo content prioritizes regions of clarity whereas focusing on photo quality prioritizes attention to regions of blur...

Attentional limits and freedom in visually guided action

James T EnnsDepartment of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, CanadaProg Brain Res 176:215-26. 2009

..These findings help clarify the conditions under which interference-free multitasking is possible and point to new challenges for research on the attentional limits of unconscious visual processing...

Object substitution and its relation to other forms of visual masking

James T EnnsDepartment of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4Vision Res 44:1321-31. 2004

..Results strongly supported the predictions and pointed to a new understanding of masking based on the separate processes of object formation and object substitution...

Visual binding in the standing wave illusion

James T EnnsDepartment of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, CanadaPsychon Bull Rev 9:489-96. 2002

..An important exception was an old item changing in contrast and polarity, which was as effective as the appearance of a new object. This indicates that search priority is biased toward object rather than situational changes...

What's next? New evidence for prediction in human vision

James T EnnsDepartment of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, CanadaTrends Cogn Sci 12:327-33. 2008

..We propose that the identification of a specific individual depends on configurational information, which is preserved if the image of an inverted face is mentally rotated before the identification process is begun...

..The authors drew 2 major conclusions: (a) Attention is required in both identification and detection, and (b) 2 factors contribute to the AB, masking of T2 while attention is focused on T1 and decay of the T2 trace while unattended...

..This conclusion held even after baseline differences in the efficiency of processing colour-defined targets were taken into account, thereby strengthening the claim of a strongly automatic pilot for visually guided limb movements...

Spatial cuing does not affect the magnitude of the attentional blink

Shahab GhorashiDepartment of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, CanadaAtten Percept Psychophys 71:989-93. 2009

..These results are consistent with the hypothesis that cue localization and target identification may take place along separate (dorsal and ventral) visual pathways...

Visual orienting in college athletes: explorations of athlete type and gender

..Results show that participants are incapable of consciously accessing the information used in pointing, even though they can see and feel their hands in action and accurate performance depends on it...

..We concluded that two scanning biases may be in effect: (1) an automatic bias favoring items in locations relatively distant from the current focus of attention and (2) a learned bias to scan letters in a left-to-right direction...

..This indicates that the 'automatic pilot' is susceptible to interference from multiple visual inputs, implying that the dorsal stream is less effective at guiding actions online when multiple targets are attended...

..Both effects are exaggerated when search is performed in a large projection dome (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that the human visual system prioritizes events that are likely to require a behaviorally urgent response...

..But when the selection regions could be coarser, up to 6-7 locations could be selected. The authors discuss potential mechanisms underlying the selection of multiple locations and review the evidence for fixed limits in visual attention...

Differences in visual orienting between persons with Down or fragile X syndrome

..The group differences in reflexive orienting at the low MA level reinforce the practice of separating etiologies and highlight the contribution of rudimentary attentional processes in the study of individuals with mental retardation...

..Resource-depletion was ruled out as a viable account. The effect of attentional switching was handled naturally by the TLC model, while bottleneck models offered the best account of the effect of backward masking...

Rapid resumption of interrupted visual search. New insights on the interaction between vision and memory

..In this view, rapid resumption occurs because a hypothesis based on a previous glance of the scene can be tested very rapidly in a subsequent glance, given that the initial hypothesis-generation step has already been performed...

..Direct evidence for this proposal is provided by the results for a corollary perceptual feature of the disruption in object continuity: the perception of two objects, rather than only one, on the motion path...

Voluntary orienting among children and adolescents with Down syndrome and MA-matched typically developing children